The Backward Shadow

  And so the winter set in again, and Mrs. Griffiths, whose attendance had been spasmodic during the nicer weather, became steady again, an infinite help with the house-cleaning and fire-making and even cooking, which I had no time for any more. I had perforce to leave her alone with Dottie a good deal and I took her aside and urged her most strongly not to say anything that might upset or distress Dottie in any way—no gloomy stories or chalk-pit workers. ‘Oh my dear, I know the poor thing’s not well in her head,’ she replied. ‘Of course I won’t upset her. I only hope no one else’ll mention Mr. Stephens to her.’ Mr. Stephens had been taken to hospital and was in a geriatric ward. It was not this bare fact so much that Mrs. Griffiths kindly wanted to protect Dottie from; it was the truly awful stories that Mrs. Stephens was telling around the village about the way ‘they’ treated him there. She was afraid to complain too much, or have rows with the nurses, because the old man had whispered to her that they ‘took it out’ on the patients if their families complained. I saw Mrs. Stephens myself very often—she was still living in the back of the burnt-out post office; she was dreadfully unhappy, and would have had Mr. Stephens back again whatever the risk, but the doctors wouldn’t allow it. ‘The only times I can be peaceful within myself,’ she once told me, ‘is when I can make myself believe that he’s wandering when he tells me these horrible things. They can’t be true, oh, they can’t, nobody could be so cruel! But then how could he imagine anything like that? Sometimes I think it’s all a judgement on me for what I said to him, the night of the fire.’ And her fingers would begin to snap for Muffer to come to her side and be stroked, while the tears ran down her cheeks—‘I’m sorry, dear, I’m sorry, I’m sure I shouldn’t cry, you’ve got your own worries and troubles, I know …’ Seeing her did me good in the dreadful way of putting my own petty despairs into perspective, for what she was going through literally seemed to me the worst thing in the world.

  During the winter there was not so much trade in the shop, but more in London, and I had to travel up and down a good deal. The Galloping Maggot had finally gone home, so I used Dottie’s car. I didn’t have to serve in the boutique, just take the stuff up, arrange it, and have discussions with the sales staff and so on. I managed to conceal most of my total ignorance for the first little while, living, as it were, on the quality of the merchandise and Dottie’s hints, which I threw out in a casual way to impress them all with my apparent business acumen and originality. After a while I began to gain a little experience of my own. I never developed, and never will develop, anything approaching Dottie’s flair; but a workaday ability to keep my head above water in the commercial millrace was quite an achievement for someone like me. And what was more important in a way, I began to enjoy it. The moment that that happened, everything became a little easier, even the erstwhile intolerable aches left over from Henry and Toby.

  I nearly always tried to see John whenever I was in town, and several times we had a meal together. He was doing neither specially well nor badly; his life just seemed to jog on. He had managed to get a room to himself, mainly because his two unsavoury room-mates had gone their several ways and he had to come to an arrangement with his landlord to pay a bit extra to keep other tenants out. He had rearranged the room, which was now an enlarged version of his ‘box’ in Doris’s house—all the walls were covered with a dense, vibrant montage of posters, bits of fabric, newspaper cuttings, pin-ups black and white, male and female—a sort of glorious indiscriminate paper love-in. I added several items to this collection, including some of our carrier bags and some tea-towels which were now one of our lines, plus remnants whenever I had them to spare, though I had most of them made into patchwork cushion-covers or toys. His furniture was mostly either wicker, or metal, except the bed-head, which was a vast baroque thing he had picked up in a junk-yard, all carved with broken birds and fruit and bells and painted a bright, shiny mixture of colours—it was very psychedelic, at a time when that word hadn’t been thought of. In fact the whole room was a sort of ‘happening’; one had to narrow one’s eyes and one’s sensibilities whenever one entered, or be dazzled and almost intoxicated with all that chaos of colour. John himself began to dress in a very far-out way, in what I then thought of as Caribbean clothes—bright yellow slacks, pink or orange shirts, even coloured canvas shoes. The effect was starling, but, once one’s eyes had accustomed themselves, funny and pleasing.

  John’s and my relationship never changed, never varied, and hasn’t until this day. I look upon it now as the one steady, reliable thing in my life. (Other than David; and I can’t, I dare not, really count him. More and more I’m convinced that it is fatal, almost wicked, to depend on one’s children; it’s bad enough that they depend on you.) I’m ashamed now to remember that at first I was embarrassed to have John come down to the cottage. He looked pretty outrageous even in London, before it began to swing; imagine how he looked to an ultra-conservative country village. It was Dottie who finally insisted that I invite him, and furthermore go up to town and fetch him. She needed to see him, she said, when I had described him and his abode to her. So I brought him, and in the event of course it was not embarrassing at all; true, every eye in the high-street turned as we walked or drove along it. I was less susceptible to public opinion than I had thought, and not merely didn’t care, but rather revelled in it; and John simply didn’t notice. Dottie, when we arrived, was downstairs—very unusual for her, she spent most of the time in bed, or at least in her room; but she was dressed and lying on the sofa. The effort this must have cost her surprised me (all this for John?). She actually stood up when we came in, and shook hands with him and led him to a chair, and then I noticed she had prepared a drink for him and everything, it was really quite astonishing—I mean, she’d only seen him about twice before in her life, and here she was, receiving him according to the first of her proverbial guest-categories (‘There are three kinds of guests, honoured, tolerated, and bloody nuisances’). They sat down together like old friends and began at once to talk about Dottie’s state of health, a subject I had strictly forbidden him to touch on, but she started it.

  ‘I’ve been ill,’ she said without preamble.

  ‘Not hard to see that,’ he said. ‘What the matter with you?’

  ‘Didn’t Jane tell you?’

  ‘She tell me you had a nervous breakdown.’ I sucked in my breath. To my knowledge, the words had never been spoken in Dottie’s presence till then. ‘But I dunno what is it,’ he added.

  ‘It’s like—if all the strings on your guitar went pop at once.’

  ‘Ah. No music after—uh?’

  She shook her head. ‘Only jangling and banging.’

  ‘Sort of like being crazy?’

  ‘Very like it.’

  ‘My Mama went crazy,’ said John matter-of-factly.

  ‘Did they put her away?’ I stiffened in my corner, because I thought I heard a thin, panicky note in Dottie’s voice, but it may have been just the contrast with John, who had spoken entirely casually.

  ‘No, and you know why? Because we never told anyone. We just kep her with us. She wasn’t mad, you see, she was just crazy. Didn’t want to hurt nobody. Wanted to be different people. So we let her be whoever she wanted, and we kinda—loved her, and after a bit … she came back. And nobody ever knew.’

  ‘How long was she like that?’

  He shrugged. Time never meant a thing to John. ‘Dunno. A year—two years maybe. Yeh, it must’ve been two years, with the time it took her to come back. That took a long time, till she was really Mama.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Dottie. ‘Even when I was at my worst—’ she glanced at me, and away again, ‘I never wanted to be anyone but me.’

  ‘You got a different kind then, I guess,’ said John placidly. His brilliant shirt stood out fantastically against the worn, darkened floral linen of Addy’s old armchair, like a bird of paradise in an old apple tree. He settled his back more comfortably, took a big swig of his drink, and grinned at Dottie
. ‘Me, I kinda like crazy people. Now, you take Doris. She wasn’t at all crazy. But Mavis was a little, with all those things she had in her room, and the cat and all that. And as much as she was crazy, I liked her. And Toby. That cat was real crazy—wasn’t he, Janie? In them days when we was all together? That was a crazy time, and I was never so happy like them.’ He shook his head, fondly and reminiscently.

  ‘I wish I’d been with you in that house,’ Dottie said suddenly.

  ‘Yeh man, that was a time all right!’ He smiled tenderly at me, and then jumped up. ‘Hey though! Where is he—that baby you had in you belly, where’s that crazy baby shared all them good times with us?’

  When he saw David, he carried on as if he’d never seen anything like him in the whole of his life. He danced, he shouted, he capered and sang; he lay down on the floor and rolled about, just as he used to roll on my rug in the L-shaped room. David fell in love with him—all of him, his woolly head, his black shining face, his expanse of teeth, his pink palms, his Caribbean clothes. We couldn’t drag them apart. John had to carry David to bed at last, and I didn’t even get a goodnight. I left them alone in David’s room, John singing and playing the bongo drums on David’s tummy, to his utterable enchantment.

  I went down to Dottie, who was lying on the sofa smoking and looking quietly at nothing as she often did. But she turned to me the moment I came in, and smiled one of her old, vivid smiles.

  ‘What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person,’ she said. Her voice, for the first time, sounded completely normal.

  So Dottie got better. As John said, it took a long time till she was really Dottie. I helped, David helped, John helped, time helped—and in the end, she began to help herself, and at last one evening she came into the kitchen, put on an apron briskly and said, ‘I’m making supper tonight, you must be whacked.’ I was; I’d been in town in the morning, and in the shop all afternoon. But still I was doubtful, and she saw it, and said, ‘Look at me, and don’t worry any more. I’m cured.’

  ‘Still. Take it easy.’

  ‘I don’t want to. When I was well, I never took it easy. If I take it easy now, I won’t feel I’m well. And I’ve got to feel I’m well. One can’t be a nervous wreck forever.’ We looked at each other, she with an odd shyness which I had never seen in her before, and I searchingly, trying to see if this long-dreamt-of recovery was real or only a phase of the illness. And then suddenly we were hugging each other in the rather embarrassed, awkward way of women. ‘All right then,’ I said. ‘The steak’s in the fridge.’

  ‘Have we any champagne?’

  ‘No, sorry. I didn’t have notice you were going to be cured today.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll stay crazy until opening time tomorrow.’ We both laughed; I felt a surge of wild relief. At last, at last she was better! And hot on the heels of that unselfish thought, came the selfish one—at last I’m not entirely alone!

  During that meal, which was a celebration even without the champagne, we talked as we had never talked before about the shop. I say never before, because in the early days it was all one sided, Dottie had all the enthusiasm, all the ideas; I was simply a sounding-board. Then, when in recent months I had desperately wanted to talk to her, she hadn’t been there properly. Now at last some of her interest revived, we could begin to exchange true—and literal—shop-talk. I had so much to tell her; once I started, I couldn’t stop. I put her to sleep eventually, poor girl. And after she’d gone to bed, and I was still lying awake, feeling terribly excited and stimulated, I had a wonderful vision of what was ahead for us—the first really cheerful, hopeful thoughts I had entertained for longer than I could clearly remember. Dottie and I would be real partners now; I had served my apprenticeship and could work with her on an even footing. The business now mattered to me as much as to her, and I knew almost as much about it. There seemed no reason at all why we shouldn’t make a real success of it between us. And as for our mutual personal problem—to wit, men—in that elevated moment of anticipated happiness, there was no room for doubts. My old conviction returned to me full force—once one achieves self-reliance, once one has overcome the need for men, that’s when they come, usually in droves. I laughed into my pillow, fell asleep and dreamed of David, grown tall and handsome, making love to me … horrors! But I woke the next morning laughing because it was so obvious and Freudian, and I felt so happy suddenly, I felt that I, too, had been cured …

  This lovely feeling went on for several days—a week. I shared everything with Dottie, every titbit, every tiny incident to do with the shop, all the stored-up bits of gossip about the various suppliers’ personal lives—I never seemed to stop talking, and Dottie listened, as I had once listened … Our roles were completely and exactly reversed. Dottie was now the stay-at-home partner, cooking the meals, looking after the baby, taking phone-calls (we had a phone in the cottage now) and occasionally going to see people, though she said she didn’t feel very good at that yet and I didn’t encourage it. And I was the active one, rushing hither and yon all day and bringing my work home with me at night. I was only waiting for the day when she would volunteer to come with me to the shop, I could hardly wait to show her all I had done there, and for the delight of seeing her properly back in harness. I felt certain that as soon as she stepped inside the doors, her old passionate involvement would grip her again and she would instandy begin to flash round the place in her old way, upbraiding me for missing possibilities, re-arranging everything, asking all the questions that she still hadn’t, somehow, asked … Only when she did all this, would I be convinced that ‘Mama had come back’.

  After about a fortnight, I could stand it no longer.

  ‘Today you’re coming with me to the shop,’ I said one morning over the usual hasty breakfast.

  She stopped eating and looked at her plate for a moment, and I felt a physical qualm of uneasiness amounting to fear; not mine, but hers. Then she looked up with a quick smile and said, ‘All right. It’s time, isn’t it?’

  She was perfectly silent during the drive. I thought, she’s worried about the changes, about what I’ll have done to it. I rattled on, ‘Look, love, don’t be afraid to tell me where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve learnt a lot, but I’ll never have your touch. You’ll probably have to set the whole display to rights. I won’t mind—honestly.’ She didn’t respond, and somehow my heart sank.

  When we got to the shop, I didn’t open up at once; we stood in front of the window, gazing in at the window-dressing, or rather she gazed at it and I gazed at her, trying to gauge her reaction. Her face was bleak; nothing came alive in it, neither satisfaction nor annoyance, and no excitement either, not a flicker. ‘What do you think?’ I asked at last, with forced cheerfulness. ‘Not bad for a beginner? But you must re-do it.’ She turned away from the window abruptly. ‘Let’s go in, it’s cold out here,’ she said, with a little shiver.

  I unlocked the door and there was a whole silly shambles about who should go in first. I felt my nerves getting more and more on edge. Finally I walked in past her, and she followed slowly, looking round. ‘Just wander round, get the feel of it again,’ I urged her. She moved round indeed, but with a timid air, and when she touched things it was tentatively, without a trace of her old authority, rather like the sort of customer who has to buy a present for someone and hasn’t a clue what to get. After a bit she turned to me and said, with a little sharpness, ‘Please don’t stand there looking at me. It makes me nervous.’ I at once went into the back and busied myself there; I unpacked some new stuff, and when I had it dusted—and, incidentally, had made some coffee—I called her in.

  ‘Dottie! Come through and see something.’

  When she began to walk through, I realised suddenly that I hadn’t heard a sound from her, not a footstep, since I left her; it was rather uncanny, as if she hadn’t moved at all. Her face looked a bit white as she came in, and she didn’t look at me directly. ‘Look!’ I said.

  She approached the table slowly and picked u
p one of the pieces. It was the latest of Ron’s things, now rapidly developing into one of our most exciting lines. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted to surprise you,’ I said. ‘But Ron’s stuff is among the most successful at Heal’s—they’re crazy about him. He’s quit his job in the factory and gone into this full-time—spent his savings in his own little foundry. I went up to see him not long ago. I so agree with you about him. He told me his wife nearly ran away from him when he left his steady job, but she’s dead proud of him now he’s doing so well—he’s selling stuff privately too, and beginning to get overseas orders.’ Dottie still said nothing, but stood turning the smooth glass round and round in her hands. ‘You did that,’ I said quietly. ‘You brought him out and made him an artist. You’ve done that to quite a lot of people. Aren’t you pleased with yourself? Don’t you feel satisfied?’

  Suddenly I saw that she was crying. ‘My God, what’s the matter?’ I asked in dismay.

  ‘I don’t—feel—anything,’ she managed to say, with great difficulty. ‘That’s all. Even about this—even this. Nothing, Jane. Just—sad, sad, sad.’ She put the glass piece down and turned away, holding her face in her hands. I went to her and held her. ‘It’s gone,’ she sobbed. ‘That lovely excitement, that purpose and direction—I remember it, but now it’s all left me. I’ve gone cold on it. I’ve even lost that! Oh God, I’m so lonely!’

  I forget now which of us made the suggestion. Perhaps neither of us had to actually say it. It was hanging in the air between us for a long time, anyway, before it was mentioned. And then, suddenly, we were talking about it, and Dottie was showing animation for the first time in many long, weary, empty winter weeks.

  ‘But it’s your money,’ she kept saying. ‘Addy left it to you. How could I take it?’ And yet, she spoke without conviction, for the sake of form, and I knew even then that she would take it; it was as if she had received some sanction which I knew nothing about. Because when I finally said, ‘I’m sure this is what Addy would want,’ she fell silent and looked at me gratefully, as if she had been waiting for me to understand something.